Home

4/20/11

..nothing so liberalizes a man and expands the kindly instincts that nature put in him as travel and contact with many kinds of people

Mark Twain

Castles in the Sky is the incredible sequel to Sipping Jetstreams, the epic 2006 movie about Taylor Steele´s and Dustin Humphrey´s surfing travels around the world. What made that flick so appealing resided in the distinctive philosophy that both filmmakers shared on the whole concept behind the making of surf films . In their website it is written that "they decided to scrap the old surf-travel strategy of fly in, surf, fly out in a favour of true exploration of a culture - physical, spiritual, musical, and emotional. Ten-day trips were replaced with two-month sabbaticals. They gave up the `sure to score´ mentality that had dominated surf travel for decades in favor of a more rhythmyc journey into the heart of a place". You don´t get this kind of approach in many surf movies today, do you?

Because the project behind Sipping Jetstreams appeared to a larger-than-life enterprise, both filmmakers rapidly realized that the solution would be to make a new movie, where the new corners that were going to be explored could be included. For this second feature you also get a whole cast of world class surf pros. From the hottest beaches to the coldest waves, every surfer and his respective destination can even take you by surprise: Dane Reynolds in Iceland, Dave Rastovich in India, Rob Machado in Peru, just to name a few.

However, the great triumph in "Castles in the sky" (and of the duology) is the enormous talent of Taylor Steele. He expresses in his movies a sensitive look that goes behind the typical surf clip, a trait that puts is work alongside with any other masterpiece of cinema. Verdict: 9/10

TLDR: Sipping Jetstreams isn't just a film, a book or an article in a magazine...it's a movement.